


About-face

by EnglishLanguage



Category: Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Uprising
Genre: Beck's self-confidence issues, Computer Viruses, Crime Fighting, Gen, Major Character Injury, Role Reversal, Tron also being a little ooc but that's fine, Tron being a mentor, blatant misuse of sentence fragments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 16:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglishLanguage/pseuds/EnglishLanguage
Summary: Here’s the way missions normally go: Beck gets hurt.(There's nothing normal about this mission.)
Relationships: Beck & Tron (Tron)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	About-face

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt about two characters switching roles.
> 
> Also based on the idea of 'what if Tron and Beck were actually... like.. frieeeeends?'

Here’s the way missions normally go: Beck gets hurt.

He’ll do something that’s two parts awesome, one part stupid, and end up scraping himself off the streets of Argon, lightcycle smashed to bits. That, or he’ll let his guard down, take a disk to a weak spot in his armor. Or he’ll get punched.

Lieutenant Paige has a brutal right cross. 

After everything, Beck limps back to his mentor, sometimes collapses, and _ always _gets caught around the waist, unceremoniously dragged to a couch. Tron is as aggressive with his care as he is with everything else.

It took Beck whole centicycles to realize that Tron is constantly short-tempered not because he hates everything in existence, but because he _ worries. _ About the the Grid, the Occupation, and about Beck, apparently…

Beck still remembers--by which he means the incident was scorched into his memory files--the first time he escaped a skirmish with serious injury: stress fractures. Jagged, pixelated ruptures running from his wrist to his elbow where Tesler tried to tear his arm off. He wasn’t so accustomed to pain, then, and the horror of seeing his own raw data and bleeding circuits reduced him to a shivering wreck.

With a particle-soft touch, Tron traced fingers over the wounds, examining them; he coded careful patches into Beck’s disk, keeping a firm hand on Beck’s shoulder through the whole process. 

(“You’re safe, Beck. Repeat it.” “I’m- I’m safe?” “Again. Convince me.” “I’m safe. I'm okay.”)

That’s the way it always goes, to the point that Beck _ struggles _to unwind after an operation until Tron talks him down, grounds him with the dull ache of a high-access scan, with the strange combination of gentle hands and a scathing lecture.

* * *

Here’s the way missions normally go: Beck gets hurt.

He knows how to deal with that.

* * *

There’s a virus propagating in Purgos- _ “Another _ one,” according to Tron, “I’m surprised the local factions haven’t derezzed it already-” and Beck conveniently remembers that he’s missed his last two shifts at the Garage. He should probably catch up on his work.

Tron doesn’t let him go that easily.

“But I’m not a firewall,” Beck argues. “I don’t have anti-tamper subroutines. Users, I’ve never even _seen_ a virus.”

Glaring, Tron shakes his head, folding his arms--one hand holding his disk--across his chest. The position seems almost defensive. “If I’m teaching you to fight, I’m teaching you how to fight malware, too. This should be an easy mission; it’s a file infector, relatively primitive.”

“Why?” Beck interrupts. “It’s not like Tesler’s going to weaponize a virus against us. He’s not completely glitched.”

Tron closes his eyes (Beck tries not to be grateful as the force of the monitor’s stare slides off of him), and something brief and bitter spasms across his face. He exhales, opens his eyes again. 

“Maybe not Tesler,” Tron decides, but it’s not a concession. 

* * *

Beck goes to Purgos. He doesn't expect the trip to be pleasant.

But it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Never like _ this. _

* * *

He comes online to ten separate damage warnings. Deprioritizing them (he’s broken, he _ hurts), _Beck braces a hand against a wall, pushes himself to his feet. Shakes, from head to toe, as his subroutines lock up and leave him trembling. He realizes his disk is in his hand, deactivates it, slots it back into place in its dock. 

Something’s wrong.

_ Glitch it. _

Static claws at Beck’s circuits, and he shakes his head, trying to throw off the white noise, the pain, that obscures his memory. “Tron?” The question comes out in a strained whisper. It takes a nanocycle of silence for confusion to cave in, give way to panic. “Tron!” Beck stumbles, blinks, trying to see, but everything’s a _ blur, _and…

“Tron! Where-”

A self-repair process clicks into place. Beck’s vision clears.

He almost wishes he were still disoriented.

Because now it makes sense why the alleyway reeks of sour corrosion, of death, why Beck is injured, why he knows, as if on instinct, the importance of calling out for his mentor. Sprawled in the middle of the alley, Tron is… crooked. Limp. Motionless and stagnant in a way that Tron should never be. Across the length of his body, neon blue circuits flicker and ebb to black nothingness. Arcs of sickly yellow electricity snap across ruptured armor, leaving carnage in their wake: pits of dull, charred data and heat-splintered voxels.

The sound- _ “Tron?” - _that staggers from Beck’s throat is less a name, more something torn and strangled, incoherent.

Tron stiffens, his chest heaving in sharp, stuttered motions.

He’s alive.

Bitter relief flushes through Beck’s circuits; five crooked steps bring him to his knees at Tron’s side, leave him shaking. He reaches out-

“Stop.”

Beck freezes.

“Don’t-” Tron grunts, lets his eyes--already narrowed with agony--slide shut. “Don’t touch. Infected. Let it run its course.”

“Infected?” 

Short of total deresolution, it’s the worst injury Beck has ever seen. There’s a gaping, crescent-shaped _ hollow _in Tron’s abdomen. The voxels at the edges of it are nearly transparent, starting to cave in. Veins of orange creep out from the wound, spreading-

_ This is a virus, users above; it’s eating him- _

And wherever the orange travels, Tron’s code shrieks with error warnings, splits into thin fissures. There’s liquid energy splattered… everywhere.

(Another piece falls into place, and Beck remembers the viral program, the malware, that twitched, dripped with the stench of ozone, opened its mouth and unhinged its jaw, exposing damp teeth, needle-thin…)

Beck can’t _ not _ touch Tron. A virus is tearing Tron apart, slowly derezzing him, and Beck can’t leave him to suffer through it ungrounded. Not as the program’s jaw locks shut against a low whine, his body seizing with a brutal surge of electricity. Not as his eyes open again, blunt and distant, clouded with pain. Desperate--there are tears gathering around the corners of Beck’s jaw--he grabs at Tron’s hand.

His fingers close around damp voxels.

Tron is missing an _ arm. _

Beck chokes. Wrenching to the side, he curls into himself, wipes Tron’s fluids off of his shaking hands.

“Beck. I’m fine.”

“Don’t pretend,” Beck croaks. “Don’t pretend it’s okay.”

“I’m-”

“No.”

“-fine.”

_ “No.” _

“Stand by,” Tron orders, and he turns away from Beck, hiding his face, still not screaming, _ how is he not screaming? _ “This infection is minor. I’ve had worse off of Dyson.” The reassurance doesn’t help. Beck flinches.

He tucks his hands against his stomach, restraining himself, and bows his own head until all he can see is the ground splattered yellow and white-blue. Scrubbing his cheeks against his shoulders, clearing away cooling tears, Beck bites down a thousand, pointless apologies. He should have done better, moved faster, stopped the virus before it managed to… 

What? His breath hitches. He still can’t remember. 

Gradually--too gradually--Tron’s self-repair processes kick in, smothering the virus. Tentative, Beck runs a scan, almost loses traction of it (because he’s a mechanic, not security, and there’s so much damage) when he stumbles across lines of code torn to ragged halves, dismantled and put back together _ wrong. _When Tron finally speaks, his voice trembles, and his signature in the system… wavers. “We need to leave.”

Beck shakes his head. There’s no way Tron can stand and function in his condition, let alone run or fight. And Beck is strong, but not like Tron--he isn’t built like a security monitor, with military-grade subroutines and dense musculature--so he can’t carry Tron all the way back to Argon.

“I need you-”

“I don’t know how,” Beck interjects.

Tron hisses. “Beck, listen. I need you to help me walk.”

There’s no question to it, no ‘can you do that?’ There’s only Tron’s misplaced confidence in Beck, the same, unspoken look of ‘I trust you’ that Tron always directs at Beck when he tries to take control of the revolution, recruit his friends, act like more than the mechanic he is.

“Can you even drive your lightcycle?” Beck asks, almost whimpers. Tron only shakes his head, pulling his lower lip in between his teeth and biting down. He looks _ exhausted. _He needs Beck to take charge, and there’s no other choice.

Before anything else, Beck deactivates the second disk attached to his first, letting the Renegade’s white armor derez. He doesn’t feel like the Renegade right now--he’s confused and frightened and _ aware _that the Renegade should’ve fought harder to stop the virus. If he’s going to drag Tron back to Argon, he’s doing it as Beck.

No pretending.

“You- Just- Roll over, alright?” 

In jerky increments, Tron flops onto his stomach, grunts, and pulls his knees against his chest. Placing cautious hands on broad shoulders, barely brushing his palms over the sleek plates of Tron's armor, Beck tugs upward, holding Tron in place as the other program stands and sways.

“Lean on me,” Beck coaxes, slipping under Tron’s remaining arm. “Lean-”

Tron’s knees buckle. The program’s weight drops on Beck like a tank and Beck trips forward, running rapid calculations on how best to support Tron, how to conserve his energy…

Reaching up over his shoulder, Beck seizes onto Tron’s forearm; he wraps his free arm around his mentor’s waist. Cautious, he takes a step forward and releases an unsteady breath when he doesn’t lose his grip. “Okay,” he murmurs, to himself as much as Tron. “This is manageable.”

Tron hums--his head lolls sideways, his jaw clipping Beck’s collar, and the monitor startles, forces himself upright.

“Leave it,” Beck commands, bumping a shrug against Tron’s arm to ensure Tron understands what he’s saying. Almost wary, Tron lets his head tilt into the crook of Beck’s shoulder.

_ It’s meant to be Tron helping Beck, not the other way around. Beck doesn’t know how to do this, he’s never seen Tron so helpless… _

“I’ve got this,” he promises, guiding Tron toward the street. “I’ve got you.”

  
  



End file.
